Military personnel and other users employ a wide variety of different weapon systems. Many weapon systems include weapons that have a gun barrel. Ammunition is fired from the gun barrel. Ideally, when the decision is made to fire ammunition from the gun barrel of a weapon, the ammunition properly fires, and exits the gun barrel towards its target. However, occasionally ammunition remains in the gun barrel of a weapon after a failed firing. In hostile environments, it is important to clear the failed ammunition from the gun barrel as quickly as possibly, so that new ammunition can be fired from the gun barrel. Until the failed ammunition can be cleared from the gun barrel of a weapon, the weapon is usually unusable.
A safety concern involved with clearing failed ammunition from the gun barrel of a weapon is that the ammunition may go off, explode, or otherwise what is referred to generally as “cook off” within the gun barrel. If personnel are near the gun barrel of a weapon, or in the case of a large gun barrel, have their hands in the gun barrel of the weapon, the personnel can become injured or die when cook off occurs. Therefore, knowing when or if failed ammunition will cook off is important.
Determining whether or if cook off of failed ammunition will occur within a gun barrel is difficult to accomplish, however. Many times a predetermined length of time is waited for all failed ammunition to possibly cook off in the gun barrel of a weapon, even if the likelihood that cook off may occur is infrequent at best. Waiting for all failed ammunition to cook off, however, means that any time ammunition fails to properly fire from the barrel of a weapon, the weapon is unusable for this length of time while personnel wait to see if cook off occurs.
For these and other reasons, therefore, there is a need for the present invention.